iara asked: Do you think it would be hard for them to pull a “Shinhwa” (or Beast)?

Hi.
Do you think it would be hard for them to pull a “Shinhwa” (or Beast)?
Even if I don’t think it’s possible now as most of them have already resigned. Just curiosity.
Thanks!

It would certainly be nice but it seems unlikely since some of them signed new extensions to their contracts back in January. Barring some crazily lenient clauses that allow the contracts to be voided without much trouble, it’s going to be difficult for them to get out of these contracts of exclusivity.

I know people talk about “renewals” but that’s not correct. Even me casually calling them “extension contracts” is only half the story since these contracts are more about giving exclusive rights to an agency to manage (or take a cut) of your activities as a celebrity. With that in mind, you can kind of tell what SM’s wants out of these contracts, and you can probably tell that it’s unlikely that SM are not about to let go easily of the ones that have signed on again.

Despite how they have been behaving in the past few weeks, SM can still potentially offer a lot to idols. You can keep calling the company names but there’s a reason they’re still growing as a company, why kids and their trainers want them to be accepted into the SM Academy, and why big celebrities signed on to join the SM Entertainment group. With so many idols wanting to branch out into acting and general entertainment, favour with SM can provide job opportunities with SM C&C-funded productions that a rookie actor from an average acting agency could never realistically hope to land.

There was talk of SM being open to making a completely new kind of deal with SNSD to make sure that while SNSD members would have freedoms, SNSD as a group could still be active (and SM could still take a cut of any generated income). In light of recent events, I think maybe SM was just feigning interest to try and buy time so that they could do all the things that they did during the 10th Year Anniversary Comeback promotions.